by Lucy Auburn
Thankfully his beast form had left large paw prints in the dirt, claws digging in, teeth rending and dropping bodies behind as proof of where he’d gone. I followed the path through the graveyard towards a mausoleum sitting at the top of a small hill, tall white columns supporting a V-shaped roof. The door had been torn from its hinges, leaving a large gaping hole in the ivy-covered front.
I dismounted and let Fira’s reins hang straight down, which she’d been trained to mean she shouldn’t move. Sword in one hand, I kept my fire close to my palm, ready to strike if I saw something in the mausoleum.
That was when she walked out, tipping her face towards the warm sun. My heart stopped beating—and then started again with a jump. Frozen, I studied her from head to toe: ripped silk dress, blood covering her—blood that I hoped wasn’t hers—and a fresh paleness to her skin. Her dark hair was a mess, her clothing and skin covered in dirt and grime, but it was her. She was alive.
Selena.
Leon walked out of the mausoleum after her, a strange look on his face. She said something to him—and then her eyes met mine, and I felt like the Earth was trembling beneath my feet.
No, I didn’t just feel it. The earth was trembling beneath my feet—another terrible earthquake. Selena was still staring at me, something wordless and unspoken on her face even as the ground shook.
That was when I saw it behind her, coming out of a glowing door of white. “Get back!”
I leapt into action, surging forward in a few steps. Pushing in front of Selena, I stared into the darkness of the mausoleum as the greatest, most terrifying-looking demonic creature unfurled its great wings and roared. Leon took a few steps back and began to shift into his beast form, but I knew from experience it would take time for his transformation to finish.
“Stay behind me,” I told Selena, igniting my sword in my hand. “I’ll take care of this.”
“Elah, don’t—”
There was a warning in her voice, one that was cut off by the winged thing’s terrible roar. Whipping my sword arm back, I planted my feet and threw my sword straight towards it in a move I’d seldom used. The blade tipped end over end, flames growing by the second, and planted itself in the middle of the winged creature’s chest.
It stumbled back, body arching around the sword with a pained expression. I didn’t relax yet; pulling a dagger from each of my hips, I ignited them both with more of my blackfyre flame, prepared to keep the fight going. At my side Leon, now the beast, growled a deep and familiar rumble. Together, I was sure we could put this thing down—and protect Selena.
That was when the winged beast chuckled.
Glowing eyes staring at me, it reached towards my sword and pulled it from its chest as if it was nothing. I gaped, mind whirling, as the flesh that had been parted by my blade knitted back together.
Then it took my sword in its hands and snapped it like it was a simple wooden stick and not a fae-forged blade purposefully made to kill demons. I had another in my saddlebag, but I’d never expected to use it.
Selena grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “Run!” she screamed, her voice full of panic. She looked at Leon’s beast form and screamed, “Run, Leon! It’s Beelzebub—he’s a demigod!”
I didn’t need to hear her instructions twice. Grabbing her by the elbow, I pulled Selena to Fira and boosted her up onto the mare’s back. She yelped and grabbed onto the pommel with both hands, scrambling forward. I sheathed one of my daggers and vaulted on behind her, sparing a brief moment to turn and throw the other dagger at the demonic creature even as it launched itself out of the mausoleum.
Putting my heels to Fira’s side, I told her, Fly! She whirled away from the mausoleum, hooves digging into the ground as she galloped with all the strength of a fae-born mare. The reins whipped over her back, and it was all I could do to grab them and hold onto Selena at the same time.
Her back was to me, my legs up against hers, that torn dress of hers pushed up to reveal the white skin of her thighs. But there was no time to revel in all this; instead, yelling over the roars and the trembling ground, I asked her: “What the hell was that?”
“Exactly,” she said sharply. “That was a demigod from Hell. Elah, the gate—it must be opening.” She turned over her shoulder, looking at the demonic thing that was following us despite Fira’s fast hooves. “It’s all my fault. I have to fix it.”
Grabbing Fira’s reins from my hands, she pulled up on them sharply. Fira tossed her head and came to a sudden stop, earth spinning beneath her hooves. I could feel her discomfort—her sides heaved—but before I had a chance to soothe my mare or take the reins back, Selena leapt from the saddle and ran.
Back. In the direction we’d been running from.
Towards this Beelzebub.
Selena
He wasn’t alone. I saw that as I ran towards him, gathering every bit of power possible in my hands. Beelzebub had brought demons with him from the Underworld, and more soul eaters too. They poured from the mausoleum, engaging in battle all across the graveyard.
I briefly glimpsed Naomi throwing a knife at one of them, and our eyes met, but there was no time for any more reunions right now. I had a demigod to stop, and quite possibly a door to close.
I felt sick at the realization that I hadn’t opened the door just to myself. It should’ve been obvious when the soul eaters came through, but I thought they just followed me from the in-between place.
I hadn’t realized that the door opened all the way into Hell, letting anything that wanted to walk out of it and onto Earth. If Beelzebub was here, that meant she might not be far behind. But I couldn’t let her walk the Earth—I would destroy her demigod followers and shut the door before she was able to reign destruction down on this world.
“You really think you can defeat me, little girl?” Beelzebub’s voice rumbled out of his deep chest as I rushed towards him, his great wings unfolding behind him. “You were promised to me by my God, and you will be mine.”
“Eat a dick!” I screamed at him.
It was all I could come up with at the time.
The earth shuddered beneath us; one of Beelzebub’s minor demon followers screeched and rushed at me. It was one of the more human-looking demons, a strongarm with grey skin and great bulging muscles. Warily keeping an eye on Beelzebub, who was even now gathering his dense and gravity-defying power to himself, I held my hand up and faced the demon.
“Selena!” Elah was behind me, his voice ringing out in alarm; I saw his sword come down on something out of the corner of my eye. “I have your back! Leon is circling around behind him!”
I gave him a short nod and threw my power out at the strongarm demon. Diving into his body with my succubus powers, I pulled his demonic energy out of him in a blink. I could do this with the lesser demons, but hadn’t yet found a way to do it with other more powerful beings, who I had to touch. Black swirled through the air and onto my skin, and I breathed it into my mouth and held it inside me. Without the demonic spirit to hold him together, the demon had nothing left.
There was barely a sound as he crumbled into dust.
Then I turned back to Beelzebub, snarling at him. “I could go all day,” I said, surging towards him with a black cloud of oily smoke hovering above my skin. “You’re going back to Hell, Beelzebub.”
“Not likely.”
That was when he pushed out the full power of his abilities. I felt invisible hands wrap around my ankles and drag me down into the earth. Pulling against them, I yelped as the pressure tightened and sat on my chest, my lungs suddenly struggling to take in air.
The beast’s roar rang out. Leon leapt onto Beelzebub’s back, his great maw opening wide to clamp down on the flesh between pale shoulder and neck. Strange grey blood squirted out. Beelzebub twitched back and threw Leon off, his wolf body falling to the ground with a sickening thud. I couldn’t even see him past the demigod’s wings, but I screamed in agony all the same.
“Leon!”
My heart suddenly
felt far too big in my chest; the only thing I could think of was getting to Beelzebub, wrapping my arms around his neck, and pulling the energy from his body until he knelt at my feet. But his power was still dragging me down into the ground, pressing on my chest and trapping me in the heavy earth.
The demigod chuckled. “You see, little girl?” He smiled a wicked grin. “You cannot defeat me. Not alone.”
That was what gave me the idea.
Reaching into myself, I pulled the power I’d taken from Leon when we passionately reunited. There was just some, but it was enough—and I had the demonic energy in me now too. Wrapping them together, I took a deep breath.
And walked out of my own body.
Or at least, my double did, but that was what it felt like. She was me, but not me, just like Leo wasn’t quite Leon. With a scream, she launched herself at Beelzebub and attacked him with the demonic energy.
He backed up a step, roaring in pain as holes were torn in his wings. With a smirk, my double glanced back at me and put her hands on Beelzebub’s head. With her skin-to-skin contact we could drain his energy finally. He sagged to his knees, finally weakening.
I’d taken in only a short few moments of his power when my double suddenly collapsed onto the ground. I reached out to take her hand and yanked her back into me, feeling an unsettling sense of equilibrium as we became one again.
But now I had some of the demigod’s powers, and I felt them settle inside me. I hadn’t been completely sure what Beelzebub could do until now that I had a part of him in me. What I felt was telekinesis, a gravity-fueled energy that wanted out.
I used it to push my feet up out of the earth and briefly hovered there before stepping forward. My hair swirled around me in the air, hands holding my own succubus power again. I advanced on Beelzebub, all the while hearing Elah’s grunts and roars behind me as he kept the demons from my back.
“Not so little now, am I?” I murmured to the demigod, lunging forward to grab a handful of his hair. I pulled his head up so that we were looking into each other’s eyes. “You’ll pay for what you did to my friend.”
I opened my mouth and pulled his energy into me, just like I had in the Underworld. He tasted like leather and spice—and deeper, like gravity and physical force. Though Beelzebub wrapped his energy around me and tried to drag me down into the ground again, I countered his power with what I stole from him, fighting against his pull.
I was pulsing my energy back into him and turning his will to mine when I heard the shouted warning from behind me.
“Selena!” Elah screamed. Breaking the connection with the demigod, I glanced over in time to see his panicked face, Fira at his back striking soul eaters with her hooves. “Behind you, watch out—”
He threw a dagger, but it didn’t connect in time. I felt the searing pain as something sharp and terrible sunk into my rib cage, sundering my flesh in two. Blood poured out of me, a claw sticking out from between my ribs.
I looked into Beelzebub’s eyes and saw a flash of triumph there. He clawed his way loose from my influence and broke away from me now that I was weakened.
There was a roar, and the beast pulled the demon from my back, but I was losing blood. So much blood. I sank to the ground, tasting copper and salt in my mouth. Elah got between me and the demigod, fire running up and down his arms, throwing the flame at him.
I fought to stay upright, trying to stand—but the pain was too much. On my knees, I watched as Elah and Leon circled me, protecting me from the demigod and our other enemies.
But the demonic hordes were growing with each and every moment that passed. The hell gate.
I had to get up and close it. It was my responsibility, after all. Eyes moving to the mausoleum, I frowned when I saw two figures running in, one of them Naomi’s sister, the other a man I didn’t recognize. I tried to stand up to follow them, to warn them about the opening gate—but the ground trembled with another shake. I fell to my hands and knees, spitting out blood, my breath coming with difficulty.
Just when I was about to pass out, warm arms circled around me, strong brown hands pressing against my chest. “Don’t worry, Selena,” Petyr said, his voice soothing as ever. “We’ve got it from here.”
That was when I heard Naomi scream. “Iva!”
11
Naomi
I screamed, seeing my sister disappear into the dimness of the half destroyed mausoleum. “Iva!”
There were four demons between me and the building my sister disappeared into, no doubt ready to throw her life away to be some bullshit hero. With a scream of fury, I launched throwing knives at the heads of two of the demons, hoping that they were the type who went down easy. The third came roaring at me, two wings and four arms moving like scythes through the air. It screeched, spitting out a strange, slippery goo at my feet.
“Fucking demons.”
Slamming my shoulder into its chest, I pushed it off balance. One of the arms reached around to slash at my back. Gritting my teeth through the pain, I yanked a long dagger from my jacket and grabbed the arm in my other hand, then severed it with the sharp blade. It made a terrible screaming sound, and I flipped the dagger up to slash through its throat.
As it stumbled away from me I faced the fourth demon, a strange thing with a snake body for a lower half and a two-armed carapace above the waist. I was just about to throw my dagger at it when its tail whipped around and pulled me from my feet. My dagger fell from my hand, arms instinctively coming up to protect my head from the fall.
“Goddamnit!”
I fought the thing’s snake tail as it wrapped around my middle, stealing breath from my lungs. It hissed, its carapace head leaning towards me. I struggled as it dragged me towards its yawning maw of too-sharp fangs.
It was a tight fit, but I managed to slip a small knife out of the cuff of my jacket. I flipped it around and jabbed it into the snake tail, slashing its flesh. But though it screamed, the tail kept wrapping around me, tightening over my legs as well as my middle. I struggled and cursed, trying to pull another knife.
My dark hunter senses told me that danger was very close at hand. No shit.
For the second time in my life I felt my death nipping at my heels and wondered if I was about to be dragged down to the Underworld, where I’d be at the mercy of every thrice-damned demon that I ever sent back to Hell.
Before I gave up the ghost, though, an ally stepped in to take over the fight. Blasts of magic slammed against the demon thing. It cried out, a strange and garbled sound, its tail slackening on me all at once. I breathed in a grateful lungful of air and scrambled away from the thing, pulling another long dagger.
This time I whipped it back and threw it through the thing’s open mouth before it could get any more ideas about squeezing me to death. Standing up, I brushed myself off and turned to thank my helper—then frowned.
“Maggie.” She raised her eyebrows at me, even as I scowled in return, torn between being impressed and frustrated. “You were supposed to stay in the car.”
The witch didn’t defend her actions. “Your sister is in there. Go get her. I’ve got your six.”
As much as I disliked leaving a very vulnerable human woman behind unprotected, I had to admit that the protection magic swirling around Maggie was more than enough to take out a few demons. Besides, she had a point: Iva was in that mausoleum now, and I’d let every single one of my allies fall before I let my sister get hurt—family came first.
I gave Maggie a sharp nod and jumped over the demon’s body, straight into the wide open entrance of the mausoleum. It looked like there had been doors here at one point in time, but there was no sign of them now. The collective demons, soul eaters, and Leon’s beast had taken them out.
To get to Selena. Who I’d seen in the battle.
But there was no time to think about the seductive curve of her mouth or the painful mystery of her disappearance. Iva and Crane were standing at the far end of the mausoleum, in front of a half-opened door. Li
ght flowed from the space, the sight of it filling me with dread and nausea.
My dark hunter senses knew that whatever the door was, it wasn’t good.
And the soul eaters flowing out of it to scurry along the ground told me this was a hell gate. Frowning, I threw knives at the two soul eaters I saw, approaching my sister and friend. I didn’t get why they weren’t fighting the soul eaters themselves—and then I saw the long knife in Crane’s hand, pointed towards his forearm.
“No!”
I screamed as he tore through his own flesh with the knife, his mouth forming the ancient words that would seal a gap between realms. He fell to the ground as he fed the gate’s fury.
Running forward, I looked at my sister and shook my head as she pulled out her own knife, but she barely even looked at me. Her eyes were on the hell gate, which was opening wider with every second. “Iva, Iva no! Don’t do this!”
But my words were in vain. The ground shook beneath us with another earthquake, and I heard a sound that chilled me to my core: the laughter of a woman on the verge of madness, triumph in her voice. Stumbling to my knees from the force of the quake, I stared up into the gap between our world and the next.
And saw a face that looked strangely familiar: dark hair, piercing eyes, a knowing grin. But this woman’s expression was cruel, where the succubus I knew was something else entirely.
On the ground in front of me, even as he bled out onto the mausoleum’s hallowed ground, the brave dark hunter picked the knife up again. He aimed it towards his neck and severed the artery there, whispering his dying words. “Occludolos.”
Then there was no more of him.
Crane’s blood seeped towards the hell gate, which swung closed several inches. The woman on the other side howled her fury. Snarling, she put her fingers in the gap between the door and the wall, trying to open it further.
There was a moment. A precipice, between one thing and the next. I took my dagger and whipped it back, aiming towards the woman. If I could hit her between her eyes maybe the gate would close.